


carved out of marble, tall and fierce

by opheliasnettles



Category: Winter's Tale - Shakespeare
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Statues, Yearning, life restoring kissing, unedited unbetad written in one sitting posted immediately, what could go wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25196215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliasnettles/pseuds/opheliasnettles
Summary: Paulina takes a moment to look at the unfinished statue.title from ‘venus’ by anais mitchell
Relationships: Hermione/Paulina (Winter's Tale)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	carved out of marble, tall and fierce

The base carving is done. 

A marble figure, stood on an artist’s platform, hovering in the middle of the shimmering greenhouse-turned-studio where the sculptor works. It is a perfect imitation of the Hermione that Paulina knew - how the sculptor created the right planes and curves of her face from portrait and cameos alone, Paulina can’t fathom. And yet she is here. 

Solid. 

It is truly a perfect replica. She has the same small curl stuck above her ear, the same broad shoulders, the same asymmetrical smile - she’d hit her cheek on the sharp edge of a table as a babe, and it had never quite functioned the same. Even her hairpins are delicately engraved. 

And yet there is something she cannot pinpoint. She looks like she will take Paulina in her arms, like she will hold her hand and tell her tales, like it is morning again and they will go rouse Mamillius and bring him on some romp through the icy forest, and when Paulina climbs the platform she fits so perfectly into the statue, they slot together, as if that hand were made to fit hers, as if that back had a divot for her palm, as if those lips were bent to fit into hers. 

It has been nearly sixteen years since Hermione’s death, and Paulina has not cried. She grieves, constantly and achingly, but she simply does not cry. It is not part of her nature. Now, with her lips on cold marble, she lets loose her tears. Hermione is dead, the woman she loved is dead, and she is kissing a statue as if it will do anything. It is a pitiful image. 

The fingers of the cold, marmoreal hand Paulina had slipped hers into close around her knuckles. She lets out a whimper, something that has built heavy in her chest for three times five years, and then the lips of stone she’s kissing bend around hers, and Hermione is pliable, no longer stone but an indescribable material, perhaps weakly analogous to leather, and it is -

It  _ is _ . It is Hermione, and Hermione holds Paulina to her chest and rocks her gently, soothes her through the night, through the wee hours of the morning, through the fifteen years of grief and buried feeling. 

_ I love[d] [you/her],  _ Paulina thinks, and she thinks it so forcefully it passes through the marble, conducts itself through Hermione. 

_ Sleep,  _ says something in her mind that doesn’t feel like her,  _ dear one.  _

She is in the daybed, and she doesn’t know if she moved or how she got there, but she is staring at the inky-purple sky and there are hands in her hair and her eyes burn to stay open. She shuts them, and she falls near-instantly into the comfort of sleep.

Somewhere, a voice that isn’t hers says  _ I loved you too.  _

  
  



End file.
